Tax Incentives

When I drive my car for business purposes I log the kilometres and at the end of the year I get to claim those kilometres. The accountant does some magic and a portion of the money that goes in PAYG somehow comes back to me.

Since August last year I have been riding to my customers premises, effectively cutting out many kilometres of claimable kilometres of travel. Missing these claimable kilometres will affect this years tax return (which went on many cycley things last year).

Replies to This Discussion

Rob I was thinking the same thing -- I have a fully maintained company car, toll beeper - the works -- Everytime I ride I am saving the company money (at least $10.00 a day just on M2 tolls) My company is very very generous when it comes to car use but I was thinking about maybe floating the idea of them paying for some of the low cost consumables ( tires/tubes/spokes) that you go thru when riding.

You can claim back an amount of your car’s expenses because you used them to generate an income. The same logic applies to your bike – if you used it for tax-deductable travel, then you should be able to claim the same portion. Calculating that might be best left to the accountant, but if you used the bike for 30% business use, then you should be able to claim 30% of the depreciation, plus 30% of repairs, maintenance, cycle specific clothing, locks, helmet etc etc. If you bought stuff purely for business use (eg a chunky new lock that you only use when parking at a client site), then you could claim it all. Of course, you won’t get as much back on tax by riding a bike, but you then you didn’t spend as much either.

Even better, why aren't all motor vehicle related tax stuff just based on fuel tax? Can you think of a better way of assessing the impact a motor vehicle has on the roads than it's fuel consumption? Win win...

I remember a learned Judge a number of years ago had a devil of a job to obtain a "company bicycle" instead of a "company car". I think that it was in SA, and that he eventually managed to get one.

Should they be pouring $millions into the bicycling industry as well as the car industry? We, as taxpayers, are providing profits for the US car corporations as a result of this. The matter is a lot deeper than this though, but it would be interesting to see what would really happen if they were told to "go forth and multiply" by the government, just to call their bluff!

No idea what the rules are here, but in the UK you can claim bicycle mileage in exactly the same way as car mileage.

The bigger issue is companies actively discouraging bicycle use. My firm, which prides itself on its social responsibility, ethical values, etc, encourages the use of public transport to go to meetings, provides bike racks, showers and lockers for commuters, but has an informal policy of not allowing bicycle use for work purposes (I assume because it's too dangerous, but nothing is written down so who knows). In my view, this undermines all of their other posturing and highlights the hypocritical nature of the organisation.